From the Fringe: ‘Dirty Stuff’

There are a whole lot of people onstage in Jonny McGovern’s Dirty Stuff – Lurleen Famous (the last name rhymes with vamoose), the would-be trailer-park superstar; Chocolate Pudd’n, the ‘70s blaxploitation diva; a young Saudi druggie whose parents think he’s a successful fashion designer; a guy who discovers he’s possessed by a gay pimp called the Velvet Hammer.

That McGovern plays all of those characters – and plays them so convincingly that you forget he’s just a gay white guy in a golf shirt – makes Dirty Stuff both a pleasure and a stitch.

The title is misleading: There’s really nothing dirty about Dirty Stuff (I know that will disappoint some of you), although his last character, the guy who’s ruled by the gay pimp, can’t stop thinking about what he calls “dirty gay stuff.”

Instead, McGovern is consumed by his characters – the smooth, heavily accented Saudi who acknowledges that it’s his accent that makes him sexy; the over-the-hill movie queen whose legs bend like elastic. There’s a sweet little moral at the end of this show, but no matter: Even a moral is palatable when you can watch someone’s body be half (only half!) possessed by a gay pimp.